Freshman Congressman Alan Grayson (Fl-08), fresh off some real victories in the House on financial regulatory reform and Federal Reserve Bank transparency, is now focusing his attention on America’s expensive wars.
He is making a direct connection between the income levels of regular Americans as well as the benefits they do or don’t receive and the costly wars underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.
From a press release (pdf) from Representative Grayson’s office:
Congressman Alan Grayson (FL-08) introduced a landmark bill last night, called the “War Is Making You Poor Act”. The bipartisan bill does three things:
1) It limits the amount of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
2) It eliminates the federal income tax on the first $35,000 of every American’s income ($70,000 for married couples), and
3) It cuts the Federal deficit by $15.9 billion.Congressman Grayson said, “All three of those things need to be done. This bill brings them all together.”
Grayson says that the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars need to be paid for out of a reasonably sized defense budget — and sets up a “supplemental budget” to cut the federal budget deficit and cuts taxes on many American working families.
Read the entire press release (pdf).
I will be offering more commentary on this after I land in Doha, Qatar where I’ll be participating in the 5th Al Jazeera Forum.
— Steve Clemons
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